Antisemitism and Its Absence in the Early Twentieth-Century American Southwest

This project considers the relative absence of antisemitism faced by rural and small town Jewish settlers in the American West between the 1880s and the 1930s, based on previous archival work focused predominantly on Jewish homesteaders in the middle to northern plains. This is all the more notable in that the majority of these populations retained observant practices, such as having a minyan or keeping kosher, that were not easy to carry out in rural environments. The current research aims to test this phenomenon in Jewish populations in the southwest, where finding aids from archives related to Jewish life in early twentieth-century Arizona, Texas, New Mexcio and Oklahoma point to the possibility of more numerous Antisemitic incidents. To date, however, the written materials located do not pertain meaningfully to the period under investigation. However, work this past year has uncovered oral history collections, primarily at the University of Arizona, that may give indications of more subtle forms of bias and antisemitism. I wish to continue to examine these sources, plus an additional one in New Mexico I’ve located.